pacitated, and discharged his extempore duties so well, that at the conclusion of the voyage he was presented with a testimonial by the captain, officers, and passengers; thus he landed with a reputation ready made. Observing that few of the company's servants knew the languages in use in Hindostan, he applied himself to master them. With this knowledge, and with his inborn aptitude for accounts and business, he soon added to his medical duties those of Persian interpreter, postmaster, and paymaster of the division to which he was attached on the breaking out of the war with the Mahrattas in 1803. He worked so hard and so successfully that when he returned to England in 1808, it was as the possessor of a fortune of £30,000 or £40,000. In 1809 he made a tour of minute observation through the United Kingdom, visiting every place of manufacturing importance. He passed the greater part of the years 1810-11 in foreign travel, visiting Spain, Portugal, Sicily, Egypt, Turkey, Greece, &c., keeping his eyes ever open to any practical arrangement which might be carefully imported into this country. It was at that early period that, struck by what he had seen at Palermo (as he once told the writer of this memoir), he pressed on the authorities at home the system of extramural interments, which has only recently been carried into effect. To these continental researches, he added a careful study of the constitution and political history of his own country. On his return to England in 1812 he entered the house of commons as member for Weymouth, a vacancy occurring through the death of Sir John Johnstone. Mr. Hume was passing through the lobby of the house when Bellingham shot Mr. Percival, and it was he who seized the assassin, and held him fast until he was arrested. He had arrived from India with a strong belief in the excellence of the government as it was, and he took his seat on the ministerial side of the house. His views, however, were soon modified, and his advocacy of a liberal commercial policy so dissatisfied the trustees of Sir John Johnstone that they refused to return him to the new parliament of 1812. His first recorded speech in the house was one in favour of popular education. For some years afterwards he devoted himself to political and social action out of parliament, cultivating the acquaintance of advanced reformers such as Francis Place, and promoting the establishment of savings banks and of Lancasterian schools. During this period of absence from the house of commons Mr. Hume began his exertions in the court of East India proprietors, where, in 1813, he fought single-handed the battle of free-trade. In 1818 he was returned to parliament for the Aberdeen burghs, which included his native town Montrose, and continued to represent them until 1830. With his varied knowledge, ever open to increase, his indefatigable industry, his imperturbable temper, he soon took rank in the house as a liberal leader of no ordinary calibre. Other men might have larger intellects or greater oratorical gifts, but the usefulness of Joseph Hume was never vitiated by a suspicion that he wished either to play the part of a demagogue or to grasp the spoils of office. To name the political and social "causes" of which Mr. Hume was the unwearied advocate in the house of commons and out of it, would be to recapitulate the programme of the liberal party from the commencement to the close of his parliamentary career. Financial reform was from first to last his peculiar question. His immense knowledge of the details of government departments was something startling, and his demands for retrenchment and economy were not of the vague kind which it is so easy to cultivate, but based on and supported by facts and figures familiar to him as the alphabet. When a "job" or a piece of extravagance was proposed, "What will Joseph Hume say?" was an expression which became proverbial. Of the pre-reform era, one of his most notable achievements was the repeal which he procured of the combination laws; and when the reform bill came, he saw ministers of the crown endeavouring to gain popularity by carrying out the reforms which he had long promoted almost single-handed. It was his exertions—long, laborious, and costly—that gave the death-blow to Orangeism in the army and out of it in the years 1835-36. It was he who moved for the appointment of the import duties committee of 1840 (see Hume, James Deacon), which led to the tariff reforms of Sir Robert Peel. It is to Mr. Hume that the public owes the throwing open of such places as Hampton Court and Kew Gardens. He was the spokesman of every grievance, public and private; and to the last his house in Bryanstone Square was the resort of all who had injuries to be redressed, or suggestions for improvement and reform requiring an advocate. During the latter years of his life he enjoyed, without the embarrassments of office, the position of a veteran minister; and nearly the oldest member of the house, where he had never made an enemy, he was respected and esteemed by the leaders of all parties in parliament. It should be added that though his name was identified with financial economy and retrenchment, Mr. Hume was always not only ready, but eager to support every claim on the public purse which had in view the social or educational elevation of the people, or indeed any object of genuine public utility; he may be said to have created the present system of lighthouses. He died at his seat, Burnley hall, in Norfolk, on the 20th of February, 1855. From 1830 to 1837 he had represented the county of Middlesex, which he exchanged in 1837 for Kilkenny. In 1842 he was reelected for the Montrose burghs, and continued to represent them till his death. The new writ for the Montrose burghs, rendered necessary by his death, was moved for by Lord Palmerston on purpose to deliver a eulogium on the character and career of their last representative. His lordship dwelt specially on the singular disinterestedness of Mr. Hume's long and laborious political career, and said of him that "he took the lead in almost every branch of improvement and in every measure of improvement which has of late years been carried into practical operation." Mr. Hume had married, in 1815, a daughter of the late Hardin Burnley, and to his public merits added the private virtues of an excellent son, husband, and father.—F. E.
HUME, Patrick, the author of a valuable commentary on Milton, flourished at the close of the seventeenth century. Scarcely anything is known of his personal history, but it is probable that he belonged to the Polwarth branch of the Hume family. His annotations on Milton's Paradise Lost were published in a folio edition of that poem by Tonson in 1695. They are written in a nervous style, and display a refined taste and most extensive learning.—J. T.
HUME, Sir Patrick, Bart., first earl of Marchmont, was born in 1641. He was descended from the Homes of Wedderburn, who were cadets of the powerful family of the earls of Home. Sir Patrick entered public life as member for the county of Berwick in 1665, and rendered himself conspicuous by his opposition to the wretched government of the duke of Lauderdale. He accompanied the duke of Hamilton and other leading Scotchmen to London in 1674 for the purpose of laying the grievances of the country before the king, and in the following year was imprisoned by the privy council, on account of his appeal to the court of session, for protection against the arbitrary and illegal assessment levied for the support of the troops in garrison. He was set at liberty by the king's orders in 1676, but was again imprisoned for a short time in 1679. When the judicial murder of Russell and Sidney took place in 1684, Sir Patrick knowing that he was a marked man, and having learned that his venerable and patriotic friend Baillie of Jerviswood had been apprehended, sought safety in concealment, and lay hid for a considerable time in his family burial-vault.—(See Hume, Grizel.) After the execution of Baillie, Sir Patrick set out in disguise for the continent, and after several hairbreadth escapes found refuge in Holland, where he received a friendly welcome from the prince of Orange. He was condemned in absence by the Scottish council, and his estates and titles were forfeited. He accompanied the earl of Argyle in his unfortunate expedition to Scotland in May, 1685. Lord Macaulay, who denounces Sir Patrick as "conceited, captious, wrongheaded, and an endless talker," ascribes the failure of the enterprise, in part at least, to his perversity and that of Sir John Cochrane. Hume, after lying concealed for some weeks, made his escape to the continent and took up his residence in Utrecht, where he remained with his wife and family upwards of three years. He accompanied the prince of Orange in his expedition to England in 1688, and was returned by the county of Berwick to the convention of estates in Edinburgh in March, 1689, which conferred the crown on William and Mary. Although he became a member of "the Club," which caused a great deal of annoyance to the government, his forfeiture was rescinded by act of parliament in July, 1690. He was shortly after sworn a member of the privy council, and was created a peer by the title of Lord Polwarth; was nominated sheriff of Berwickshire in 1692, and an extraordinary lord of session in the following year. In 1696 he was appointed lord high chancellor, and a few months later was created Earl of Marchmont. He was lord high commissioner in the parliament
